Dvorak and the Crows

Spillville, Iowa

He’s out walking, a Tuesday in June
of 1893. And he believes the field of young corn
across the river, pale green lancets jabbing
at the clouds, would remind the least homesick,
the most dry-eyed émigré of home.
This morning there was birdsong (a tanager
they called it, little red devil of a thing!)
—he swears the first he’s heard since he set sail.

The bells of St. Wenceslaus play a tune
at the hour. Immediately, as if the keyboard
of the church’s little organ were right before him,
he sees the white keys rise from the weight of invisible
fingers and fall silent, while the black keys
dip and soar, crows tilting at clouds.

The field quavers in the haze. A lone
hawk wheels above the corn.
Between the wary half steps the bells take,
he hears pentatones, the black ivories
engraving the keyboard in his mind.
He reads it with his hands, like Braille.
As always, he thinks of black bread, ripe soil,
deep woods. That will become the jumpy first theme
of his Opus 96 Quartet.

He’s a mix of joy and business, rushes home
to his piano, where the tune becomes public property
in the hot afternoon. The neighbors hear it.
His teenage girl, Otilka, hears it also
and approves, in her funny, solemn way
dances a few turns to it. Too soon,
new wife in her twenties, she’ll be gone,
a heart attack. But by then the music
will have stopped altogether. And now,
this Tuesday, he’s happy as a man
who’s just been made a grandfather by his favorite child.